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Question about hearing

Hi all, this may sound like a silly question, but, is there anyway to test a dogs hearing?

Lately Gus has been unresponsive to certain noises when he is asleep, like someone arriving home or coming into/making noise in the room where he is sleeping. I thought as he was getting older he was sleeping deeper than usual.

Recently he doesn't always hear people behind him, an example of this was...last week my son came to visit. When the porch door slid open the dogs were in the kitchen and DJ and Pippin looked behind them at the front door, while Gus stayed looking at me. My son opened the front door and the other dogs went to greet him, still Gus didn't turn round. We both realised he didn't seem to hear, so my son rattled his keys and called him, still no response. I was talking to my son and Gus still didn't notice. I pointed to my son with gus looking at me and Pippin came back as if to tell Gus my son was there. Only then did Gus turn around and was extremely excited to see my son had come to visit. I notice lately if I want Gus to leave a room and he's looking in the opposite direction to me I need to go and direct him. I thought he was just ignoring me!

What confuses me is that sometimes he appears to hear and then at other times he appears totally deaf. He was on the bed this morning when I woke uo and he was awake so I called him but he didn't even look in my direction but when he seen me in the morror sitting up he turned and came to me wagging his tail. Then just a few minutes ago I whistled to call Pippin and DJ from the garden and Gus who was standing beside me, lifted his ears back to hear..but maybe that's because it's high pitched?

You can have BAER testing done on hearing but he definitely sounds (no pun intended!) like he is going deaf -- those are classic signs. And yes, they can hear high or low pitched noises sometimes when other frequencies are gone. He sounds pretty much like Lucy. Lucy can hear sharp claps. That is what I use to get her attention. She can also hear dog whistles. But a real telltale sign is when they continue sleeping when you come in, close doors etc. That is how my parents first realised Lucy was deaf -- she'd keep on sleeping when they came home.

I suspected Oliver was going deaf (he's , mainly because he didn't hear me moving around or coming home when he was dozing. When I took him to ChesterGates for his second scan in May they were offering hearing tests so I got him tested. He wore earphones which registered his brain response to different levels of noise on a computer screen. Turns out he is almost completely deaf in one ear but has normal hearing in the other; so when he sleeps on his good ear, he can't hear much at all. He manages very well - I just have to make sure he knows when I'm going to change direction when he's walking off-lead, and usually I speak a bit louder to him. Some days, of course, being a Cavalier, he's very deaf in his good ear as well!

Kate, Oliver and Aled

Last edited by Kate H; 29th October 2009 at 07:02 PM.
Reason: a smiley sneaked in on its own! It's come back again - should be an 8!! Though I suppose Oliver is cool as well as 8!

My Harry is now completely deaf, though he started going deaf when he was still young. It is easy to get your dog to respond to hand signals, though of course they need to be looking in your direction.

I find the worst bits are when I take him for a walk and he is trotting in front of me off the lead. He will move his head to the side every few yards just to make sure I'm behind him. So when I need to catch his attention from behind, the only way I can do it is to stop! He will carry on for a few yards before realising I'm no longer there and will turn round to see what's happening. I can then signal that I want him to come to me.

In another thread (in the SM and MVD section) Karlin wrote: PSOM may or may not be related to SM -- not much is known about it. Dogs can have pain from PSOM on its own. It seems to be a separate issue. It is very common on MRIs. Of my four that have been MRId, three have PSOM to varying degrees. Only Lucy was clear. And she is the deaf one.

This seems to raise an interesting issue about deafness. Clare Rusbridge is emphatic that there is no proven connection between SM and PSOM. So PSOM could be something that a lot of Cavaliers have anyway, and which will therefore show up regularly on MRIs as a matter of statistics. However, Oliver, like Karlin's Lucy, has SM, does not have PSOM, but is deaf. Could the deafness which Oliver and Lucy have, which is not PSOM, be a symptom of their hydrocephalus? Oliver's syrinx affects his right front leg. When his hydrocephalus caused eye pain a few weeks ago, it primarily affected his left eye, and he is also deaf in his left ear. Could pressure on the skull caused by the brain affect the hearing in the same way that it affected Oliver's sight? Most Cavaliers have CM and therefore can develop hydrocephalus; many Cavaliers seem to go deaf. Is there a connection?

In another thread (in the SM and MVD section) Karlin wrote: PSOM may or may not be related to SM -- not much is known about it. Dogs can have pain from PSOM on its own. It seems to be a separate issue. It is very common on MRIs. Of my four that have been MRId, three have PSOM to varying degrees. Only Lucy was clear. And she is the deaf one.

This seems to raise an interesting issue about deafness. Clare Rusbridge is emphatic that there is no proven connection between SM and PSOM. So PSOM could be something that a lot of Cavaliers have anyway, and which will therefore show up regularly on MRIs as a matter of statistics. However, Oliver, like Karlin's Lucy, has SM, does not have PSOM, but is deaf. Could the deafness which Oliver and Lucy have, which is not PSOM, be a symptom of their hydrocephalus? Oliver's syrinx affects his right front leg. When his hydrocephalus caused eye pain a few weeks ago, it primarily affected his left eye, and he is also deaf in his left ear. Could pressure on the skull caused by the brain affect the hearing in the same way that it affected Oliver's sight? Most Cavaliers have CM and therefore can develop hydrocephalus; many Cavaliers seem to go deaf. Is there a connection?

Purely ignorant speculation!

Kate, Oliver and Aled

I too would be very interested to hear any views on this issue. My ruby, Megan (aged almost 11 years) is also an SM sufferer, with hydrocephalus, and is "deaf as a brush" (as Martin Deutschland mistakenly put it when getting his English expressions mixed up after Megan's BAER test in 2008), but is not suffering from PSOM.